“Running Free”

Interview with Paolo Baltaro

By Sergio Vilar

Arcansiel is a band with a lot of trajectory. How did you meet each other among you and like the idea arose of forming to band? 
Everything started with Marco Galletti. He’s the creator of the project.
He is the songwriter, singer and producer of “Four Daisies” and “Stillsearching”.
In 1993, Gianni Opezzo (lead guitar) asked me to join the band because Marco started his solo project (see Boxes For Foxes, www.marcogalletti.com).
In the past I worked with Arcansiel as sound engineer and I was - and I am - a close friend of Gianni and Sandro Marinoni.
So, I had to replace Marco as songwriter and producer of the band. The new singer was Paolo Carboni from Creeping Death.
At that time we recorded “Normality Of Perversion” on a 16 track analog recorder. It was a first step, a bit immature...
Then, after 10 years we decided to come back into a recording studio and join together again, with Barbara Rubin and a new live line up.
“Swimming In The Sand” is the result. I'm very proud of it.

What type of feelings or did ideas want to express through the band?
Today we are more introspective.
We want to tell stories through our subjective experience.

Which were they the groups that more you influenced them in that time? 
Very hard question. I'll try to answer but I'm sure I will forget lots. Anyway:
Pink Floyd, Sigur Ros (I personally adore them), Beatles, King Crimson, Franz Zappa sometimes, The Cure, Deep Purple, Metallica, Iron Maiden, Sex Pistols and ... uuh, so many other.

Then, which is the idea behind Arcansiel? Which is your essence? 
We start from classic melodic progressive and we try to contaminate it in as we like.
We try to go on and we don’t want to make a simple celebration of the “old times”.

How would you describe your discography? How meaning contains for you each one of those disks? 
“Four Daisies” and “Stillsearching” are Marco’s world. Melancholy and sweetness in the same time. The starting point.
“Normality of Perversion” was me and Gianni. It was a record against the rules.
You know, is like when a kid grows. Marco's music was fantastic, but we could not repeat him, we said: Ok, Evelyn, you broke my heart and I did the same. OK, I was still searching for your love and I did not find it. So, let's go outside, let's get fuckin' drunk and let's scream. We will pay the price but we want to leave home. Goodbye. But we still loved Marcos' world as a part of us.
“Swimming In The Sand” is a new point of view for everything. After leaving home and living in the rough world it was the time to stop for a moment and look inside ourselves. And say it again, with a new awareness, starting again and have a new life.

How is the creative process in your music and poetry? What factors do they influence these areas? 
The main factor of influence is our everyday's life. As I told you, we got very introspective.

Which would you say that they are the fundamental differences between the original Arcansiel and the current one? 
The time goes by. But the song remains the same, we are still the same even if Marco is not in the band anymore. We are just a bit older.

I imagine that your point of view of the progressive scene of Italy and international it should be interesting, with so many years of career... 
It's a family, but it is a small family. Progressive scene will survive... or maybe will be back to the top as in the 70's, who knows.
But I'm proud to be here. Progressive's audience is beautiful and intelligent people . They understand and they have the culture to understand.
Very hard people to find outside the scene.

For you, what significant changes has it experienced this movement through the years? 
Bad changes, the movement is getting smaller and smaller since the 70's. People seems more interested in ringtones then in good music.
But I'm sure that things will change one day. Progressive was mainstream in the seventies, somehow. Majors were interested it, and that’s why everybody knows Genesis, Marillion and whatever.
Today is a small fantastic family. But it's just a small family. We love it and we love to be here. But I think we all deserve to grow, there are great prog bands today all over the world.

Which do you believe that it is the reason for which the progressive music doesn't have a bigger market? Which would the solution be? 
Big labels are owned by managers, they don't know anything about the things they sell.
A manager is today here, tomorrow there. Why should he care? He can reach his targets in very strategic  ways, maybe brainwashing people.
The solution??? Ahaha.. I don't  really know...! A war? mmm…

How do you think that Internet has affected to the scene musical underground? 
Yes, definitively. In many ways. It does. It's very very important. It's a real revolution for every kind of art.

How do you see the future of the progressive music? 
Better than the seventies, probably in 2060...

Have you individually worked in other bands or do they have projects outside of Arcansiel? 
Yes: Personally:  Roulette Cinese, (www.roulettecinese.it) , Mc Allan (www.mcallan.it) and Sado, with Sandro Marinoni (www.sado.too.it)
I collaborated in other projects: Toxic Poison (www.toxicpoison.com), and FaberPerSempre (www.faberpersempre.it). Andrea Garavelli plays with Beggar's Farm sometimes with Clive Bunker and Bernardo Lanzetti.

What are you making at the moment? Are you already working in the material for your next studio disk? 
We will probably start recording new material in March-April 2006.

To conclude Paolo. What can we wait in the musical land for the future? 
I don't know, I don’t want to know, I hope it will be a nice surprise.

Thank you, would you like to give some message to our readers?
Stay tuned and drink to us !

www.arcansiel.com

Nucleus interview: 06/12/05